Dr Sherrill Stroschein

Senior Lecturer in Politics

Name: Dr Sherrill Stroschein

Position: Senior Lecturer in Politics

Dr Stroschein will be on sabbatical leave from UCL in term 1, 2014/15. She will be covered by Dr James Dawson. She will be a Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, based in LSEE Research on South Eastern Europe.

Introduction

Dr. Sherrill Stroschein joined UCL in September 2005 as Lecturer in Politics and Programme Coordinator of the MSc in Democracy and Comparative Politics. She was previously an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies (2003-2005) and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Ohio University (2001-2005). She has also been a fellow at the Institute on Race and Social Division at Boston University (2000-2001). She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University (2000), and her undergraduate degree from Amherst College.

Ethnic Struggle, Coexistence, and Democratization in Eastern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Paperback version published in 2014.

One problem of democracy is that it disadvantages minorities. But this book shows how ethnic Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia used protest to bring about policy changes - an informal means to integrate themselves into the governance process. Protest helped ethnic groups learn about the nature and limits of each other's claims. Democratic transition was forged through this incremental, contentious process of de facto deliberation.

Governance in Ethnically Mixed Cities

Sherrill Stroschein, ed., Governance in Ethnically Mixed Cities. London:Routledge, 2007. This collection of original essays breaks new ground by examining the dynamics of ethnic politics at the local level, rather than following in the footsteps of many previous studies which focus on the macropolitical level of states and nations.Read more in Publications »

Her research examines the politics of ethnicity in democratic and democratising states, especially democratic processes in states with mixed ethnic or religious populations. She has published articles in Perspectives on Politics, Party Politics, Nations and Nationalism, Political Science Quarterly, Europe-Asia Studies, and Ethnopolitics, as well as other journals. She is also the author of Ethnic Struggle, Coexistence, and Democratization in Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2012, paperback 2014). The book examines ethnic minority protest as a means to influence policy outcomes in Central Europe, for groups that consistently find themselves on the losing side of elections. The event analysis for the book and much of her other work relies on non-English sources, and she speaks a number of European languages.

Research

Book

Recipient of two honorable mentions: 1) from the International Studies Association (ISA) section on Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Studies, Distinguished Book Award 2014, and 2) for the 2013 Joseph Rothschild Book Prize, Association for the Study of Nationalities.

In societies divided on ethnic and religious lines, problems of democracy are magnified -- particularly where groups are mobilized into parties. With the principle of majority rule, minorities should be less willing to endorse democratic institutions where their parties persistently lose elections. While such problems should also hamper transitions to democracy, several diverse Eastern European states have formed democracies even under these conditions. In this book, Stroschein argues that sustained protest and contention by ethnic Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia brought concessions on policies that they could not achieve through the ballot box, in contrast to Transcarpathia, Ukraine. In Romania and Slovakia, contention during the 1990s made each group accustomed to each other's claims, and aware of the degree to which each could push its own. Ethnic contention became a de facto deliberative process that fostered a moderation of group stances, allowing democratic consolidation to slowly and organically take root. A summary of some of the book's arguments from a presentation at LSEE appears on the LSEE Blog site.

Recent grants

British Academy grant for fieldwork research in Eastern Europe, summer 2007

Relational Evolution of Ethnic Political Identities in Romania and Slovakia, 1989-1999: A Qualitative Event DatabaseThis research consists of a collection of digital photos of local newspaper articles in Hungarian, Romanian, and Slovak, which chronologically document the incremental emergence of ethnic political identities in Romania and Slovakia. The collapse of Communism in 1989 provided a unique moment in which political actors began to contest on an open political field for the first time in decades. It is in this setting that the "us-them" dynamics of ethnic politics can be traced over time.

Journal forum

"Everyday Responses to Marketization: Post-Socialism at the Grassroots," introduction to Everyday Postsocialism, forum for the Journal of International Relations and Developement, coordinator, with Stephen Deets and Antje Vetterlein. The forum features short pieces on the everyday adjustments that individuals had to make to markets and privatization after 1989, Vol. 12, no. 4, November, 2009.

Journal articles

"Consociational Settlements and Reconstruction: Bosnia in Comparative Perspective (1995-Present)," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 656, no. 1, November 2014, pp. 97-115.

"Discourse in Bosnia and Macedonia on the Independence of Kosovo: When and What is a Precedent?" Europe-Asia Studies 65, no. 5, July 2013, pp. 874-88.

"The Autonomous Structures of Native American Reservations," in Levente Salat, Sergiu Constantin, Alexander Osipov, and Istvan Gergo Szekely, eds., Autonomy Arrangements around the World: A Collection of Well and Lesser Known Cases (Cluj-Napoca and Bolzano: Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, ISPMN, and the European Academy of Bolzano, EURAC: 2014), pp. 187-99. Originated as a project with the European Centre for Minority
Issues (ECMI).

"The Role of Brokerage and Network Clientelism in Defusing Self-Determination Movements," in Muge Aknur, ed., Challenges to Balkan Security and the Contribution of International Organizations (Izmir, Turkey: Dokuz Eylul University: 2009).

"Territory and the Hungarian Status Law: Time for New Assumptions?," in Osamu Ieda, ed., Beyond Sovereignty: From Status Law to Transnational Citizenship? (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Legal Studies, and the Slavic Research Centre, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, 2006). Available at: http://src-home.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/coe21/publish/no9_ses/04_stroschein.pdf [External Link]

"Hungarians in Transcarpathian Ukraine," in Ukraine and Its Western Neighbors, James Clem and Nancy Popson, eds. (Washington, D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson Center, 2000), pp. 51-65.

"The Components of Coexistence: Hungarian Minorities and Inter-ethnic Relations in Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine," in John Micgiel, ed., State and Nation Building in East Central Europe: Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Columbia University, Institute on East Central Europe, 1996), pp. 153-75.

Recent papers and other works in progress

Ethnic Politics in Enclave Regions, book manuscript in beginning stages.

"Ethnic Conflict: Looking Inside Groups," requested for a collective project on the causes of ethnic conflict.

"The Relational Emergence of Political Entities," submitted for a collective project on The Relational Turn in the Study of World Politics, edited by Daniel Nexon, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, and George Lawson.

"Moderating Effects of Patronage in the Middle East and Eastern Europe," with Gul Kurtoglu-Eskisar, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey.

Ethnicity and Governance in a Europe of Regions (book manuscript,
long-term project). An examination of non-territorial governance structures,
based on a functional rather than a territorial principle. The project
includes the case studies of Belgium, Hungary, Kosovo, and Serbia.